I could never go back to CMx1, great as it was. I do however agree with some posters, that the x2 engine shines with (max) Company sized battles. Bigger than that is a bit too much for me. But some devour those monster battles. I am glad we have choice.
That said, there is no game on the market that outperforms CM at what it does.
Well if you'd stayed in the correct general discussion thread. What the heck are we doing over here in Normandy? That was English territory too long to be trusted. Remember Agincourt? Really believe that nonsense about longbows? No a traitor led the wondrous French cavalry into the mud. Some low born English bastard for sure. Back to the general forum, Viva La France!
1st Battalion HQ is not yet aware of the Marder II.
Bravo Co. radios 1st Battalion with the report of the Marder. 1st Battalion HQ shows an icon 6 seconds after Bravo Co. received the report. (Again, fast)
4th Battalion HQ is not yet aware of the Marder II.
Nine minutes later 4th Battalion received no reports of the Marder. With no common higher HQ between 1st Inf. and 4th Tank Battalion the 4th never did receive any chain of command (Vertical) reports about the Marder.
Bravo Co. / 1st Inf. sent their XO Team over to 4th Battalion’s A/O to report.
Bravo Co. / 1st Inf. XO came to within close visual C2 range (12 action spots) and reported the Marder & some friendly unit dispositions to the 4th Battalion team (Horizontal information sharing). The 4th Bn. team is selected and displays the new contact icons. Also note that the 4th Bn. team is in distant visual contact with HQ.
In a minute or two the 4th Bn. team would have reported the Marder up the 4th Bn. chain (vertical) using distant visual C2. However the contact icon for the Marder was fading badly due to age of the Marder contact information. So I moved a radio jeep up. The 4th Bn. Team shared the information about the Marder with the radio jeep. The radio jeep passed the information to the recon HQ and then from there to the 4th Bn. HQ.
Some interesting topics have been started about how information moves through the C2 chain both vertically (up & down the chain of command) and horizontally (directly from one team to another team). As a result I did some experimenting with C2 & information sharing. Below are the results and several chronological screen shots from the experiment. If anyone can offer a correction or additional information please do.
Additional useful information on the topic:
Game manual 3.01 page 62 Command & Control.
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/113787-can-somebody-answer-some-questions-on-information-sharing/
The distance information can be shared vertically (chain of command).
Voice C2: Up to six action spots, approximately 48 meters.
Close Visual (eyeball) C2: Up to 12 action spots, approximately 96 meters.
Distant Visual C2: As far as the unit’s line of sight. (In the experiment I had units sharing information vertically with Distant Visual at 40 action spots, approximately 480 meters before I stopped.)
Radio C2: Entire map. (In the WWII titles If a unit is moving on foot they will drop out of radio C2 during the movement)
The distance information can be shared horizontally (directly between teams).
Up to four action spots, approximately 32 meters. (Sometimes a team had to move to within 3 action spots)
Can information be shared horizontally between teams from different battalions?
Yes
Can information be shared between to different HQs that do not have a common higher HQ?
Vertically: No (With no common higher HQ there is no bridge for the information to pass over)
Horizontally: Yes
I used two different US battalions on a custom made map for the experiment. The 4th US Tank Battalion on the west (left) side of the map and the 1st US Infantry Battalion on the east (right) side. A high ridgeline divided the two battalions. At the beginning of the experiment no units of the 4th Battalion were in C2 with units of the 1st Battalion. An immobilized German Marder II was used as the OpFor unit to be spotted and reported.
The scouts move out to locate the German Marder II.
At 03:58:43 the scouts obtain a sound contact for the Marder II but they are out of C2.
1st Platoon is selected but shows no icon for the Marder II.
The scouts move to report to 1st Platoon HQ which still has no contact icon for the Marder II.
The scouts emerged from the woods in close visual (the eyeball) C2 range of 1st Platoon HQ and reported the Marder II location. When selected 1st Plt. HQ now shows a contact icon for the Marder.
Bravo HQ is not yet aware of the Marder II.
1st Platoon radios Bravo Company with the report of the Marder. Bravo Co. HQ shows an icon 7 seconds after 1st Plt. received the report. (That was fast)
The basic German defense doctrine was the one they developed during WW I to avoid being defeated by local concentration and artillery suppression, and it remains the basic system the Germans used in the east. That tactical system has been called the denuded front, in comparison with practice near the start of WW I of lining continuous front line trenches with solid lines of riflemen. Instead it was based around a few fortified machinegun positions, concealed, and cross fired to cover each other rather than their own front, in an interlocking fashion. The idea being to make it hard to take out just a piece of the scheme. Most forces were kept out of the front line to let enemy artillery "hit air". Wide areas were covered by barrage fire and obstacles (in WW I generally just wire, in WW II plenty of mines as well). Barrages and obstacles have the feature that they multiple in their effectiveness the more then enemy sends; his local odds does not help him, it hinders him or raises his losses instead. The MG and outpost network is meant to defeat penetration by smaller enemy numbers, while barrages crucify their masses if they overload those.
Then the main body of the defending infantry defends from considerably farther back, and executes local counterattacks into portions of the defensive system reached by the attackers. The idea is to spend as much prep barrage time as possible deep in underground shelters, and only come up and forward to mix it up with enemy infantry after they are mixed in with your own positions and hard for the enemy to distinguish and coordinate fires on them etc. This also was meant to exploit the confusion that even successful attackers were generally in, after crossing the outpost and barrage zone described above.
That is an effective enough system, but it isn't foolproof. The thinner front and separated strongpoint positions it uses are vulnerable to stealthy penetration, night infiltration e.g., rather than frontal attack on a large scale. The local counterattack part of the doctrine can be taken to extremes and get rather expensive for the defenders, resulting in mere brawling inside the defender's works, and just exchange off with the more numerous attackers. What it really relies on is the enemy being defeated by the artillery fire scheme and ranged MG fire over most of the frontage, so that the counterattack and brawl stuff only happens in a few exceptional spots, where the defenders have a safer route to the front, better information about where the enemy is, what routes are left clear of obstacles, and the like.
The main line of resistance, once hit, generally tried to solve the fire discipline dilemma by firing quite late, when the attackers were close enough to really destroy them, not just drive them to ground. Harassing mortar fire and a few "wait a minute" MGs were all that fired at longer ranges, to delay the enemy and prevent them being able to maneuver easily, mass in front of the defenders safely, and the like.
At a higher level, the division's artillery regiment commander, divisional commander, or regional "Arkos" tried to manage the larger battle by choosing where to intervene in the outcoming attack with the weight of divisional fires. They didn't distributed those evenly, or according to need. Instead they would have a plan of their own, to stop the Russians cold in sector B, and just make do in sectors A and C. They divide the attack that way. Then shift fires to one of the break ins, and counterattack the other one with the divisional reserve. The basic idea is just to break up the larger scale coordination of the offensive by imposing failure where the defenders choose, by massing of fires. They can't do this everywhere, but it can be combined with choices of what to give up, who pulls back, what the next good position is, and the like, as a coordinated scheme. The function is "permission" - you only get forward where I let you get forward, not where you want it. If the enemy tries to get forward in the place the defenders "veto" in this way, they just mass their infantry under the heaviest artillery and multiple their own losses.
I should add, though, that those doctrinal perfect approaches sometimes could not be used in the conditions prevalent in parts of Russia. In the north, large blocks of forest and marsh are so favorable for infiltration tactics that separate strongpoints with only obstacles in between just invite penetration every night and loss of the position. The Germans often had to abandon their doctrine in those areas, in favor of a continuous linear trench line. And then, they often didn't have sufficient forces to give that line any real depth, but instead had to defend on line, manning that whole front as best they could. In the more fluid fighting in the south, on the other hand, the Germans could and did use strongpoint schemes. The Russians got significantly better at night infiltration as a means to get into or through those, as the war went on.
Against Russian armor the German infantry formations also had a harder time of it. In exceptional cases they could prepare gun lines with enough heavy ATGs well enough protected and sited to give an armor attack a bloody nose, but normally they were not rich or prepared enough for that. Keep in mind that the Russians were quite good at tank infantry cooperation in their mech arm - by midwar that is, early they hadn't been - but lagged in the development of tank artillery cooperation. Which is what tanks need to deal with gun based defenses efficiently. The German infantry formations themselves tried to just strip tanks of their infantry escorts and let the tanks continue. The Russians would sometimes make that mistake, and send the tanks deeper on their own. That put them in the middle of a deep German defense that would know more about where they were and what they were doing than vice versa. But that is really an "own goal" thing - if the Russian tanks just stayed with their riders and shot the crap out of the German infantry defenses, the Russian doctrine worked fine.
On a deeper level, the Germans relied on their own armor to stop Russian armor. Brawling frontally with reserves, often enough, sometimes aided by superior AFVs. Sometimes by counterattacks that sought to cut off the leading Russian spearheads, and prevent their resupply (with fuel above all). That worked less and less well as the war went on, however, because the Russians got better at keeping multiple threats growing on the map, gauging defender strength correctly and waiting for all arms to consolidate gains, and the like. There was also just less of the fire brigade German armor later in the war, and it had less of an edge in tactical know-how.
There are also some weaknesses of the Russian doctrine that the Germans tried to exploit. It can be quite predictable. You can let them succeed at things to draw them in, in a pretty predictable way. The Russian mech way of attacking was at its best against infantry defenses, or vs armor against heavily outnumbered defenders. If they pushed too hard at a strong block of armor, they could get a brigade killed in a matter of hours. If you have such an asset, you can try to string the two together - let them hit a weak spot precisely where you want them to come on hard into your planned kill sack. They aren't doing a lot of battlefield recon to spot such things, they are mostly relying on speed to create surprise. If you let them think they just made a brilliant and formula perfect break in, they are apt to drive hard trying to push it home, and not to suspect that its is a trap. But a lot of things get easier if you have a Tiger or Panther battalion lying around, don't they?
Apocal - the mechanized corps fought like the tank corps, it just had a tank regiment with each of 3 motorized rifle brigades, plus a 4th brigade that was pure tank.
They still fought like the tank corps fought. They had as many tanks as a tank corps, with 10 infantry battalions in the formation rather than 6, and a marginally more infantry heavy mix, as a result.
This did not change their basic tactics. It just meant where one of the sub formations was barreling ahead, it would sometimes have a thinner cutting edge of tanks and a longer trailing "shield" column of trucked infantry. Though the tank corps portion would often be "on point" with exactly the same techniques as in the tank corps. In practice, the extra infantry gave the formation greater staying power after taking losses in extended action, and a superior ability to hold the ground it took.
Aured - Did the Russians use the same fire and maneuver tactics with typical triangle tasking used by the US in WW II? No they did not.
Did they understand the basic principles of fire and maneuver, sure. But the whole army was organized differently, tasked differently, placed less reliance on close coordination with artillery fires, wasn't based on small probes by limited infantry elements to discover the enemy and subject him to more of those fires, etc. Basically there are a whole host of army-specific optimizations in US tactics that just don't apply.
The Russian force is divided into its mechanized arm and the rifle arm (called "combined arms" at the army level, but still distinct from mech). Each had its own specific mix of standard tactics. There are some common elements between them, but you should basically think of them as two distinct doctrines, each tailored to the force types and operational roles that type had. Conceptually, the mech arm is the arm of maneuver and decision and exploitation, while the rifle arm is the arm of holding ground, creating breakthroughs / assault, and general pressure. The mech arm is numerically only about a tenth of the force, but is far better armed and equipped, and controls more like 2/3rds of the armor.
The Front is the first element of the force structure that does not respect this distinction and is entirely above it, and Fronts are not uniform in composition, but always contain forces of both types (just sometimes only limited amounts of the mech type). From the army level down to the brigade level, the distinction applies at one level or another. Below that level it still applies but cross attachments may blur somewhat, but normally at all lower levels one has clearly either the mech or the rifle force type and uses the tactics appropriate to that type.
The army level is the principle control level for supporting elements and attachments - much higher than in other armies (e.g. for the Germans it was almost always the division level, with little above that level in the way of actual maneuver elements). The army commander is expected to "task" his pool of support arms formations to this or that division-scale formation within his command for a specific operation, depending on the role he has assigned to that formation. This can easily double the organic weapons of such formations, and in the combined arms armies, is the sole way the rifle divisions get armor allocated to them. What are we talking about here? Independent tank brigades and regiments, SU regiments, heavy mortar regiments, rocket brigades and battalions, antitank brigades and regiments, motorcycle recon regiments and battalions, extra pioneer battalions, heavy artillery formations from regiment up to divisions in size, etc. Basically, half of the guns and all of the armor is in the army commander's "kit bag" to dole out to his divisions depending on their role. A rifle division tasked to lead an attack may have a full tank brigade attached, plus a 120mm mortar formation to double its firepower at the point of the intended breakthrough. Another rifle division expected to defend on relatively open ground, suited to enemy tanks, may have an antitank artillery brigade attached, tripling its number of 76mm guns, and a pioneer battalion besides, tasked with mining all likely routes and creating anti tank ditches and other obstacles, etc.
Every division is given enough of the supporting arms to just barely fulfill its minimal standard role, and everything needed to do it better is pooled up in the army commander's kit bag, and doled out by him to shape the battle. Similarly, the army commander will retain major control of artillery fires and fire plans. Those are not a matter of a 2nd Lt with a radio calling in his target of opportunity, but of a staff of half a dozen highly trained technicians drafting a coordinated plan for days, all submitted to and approved - or torn up - by the army commander. This highly centralized system was meant to maximize the impact of very scarce combined arms intelligence and tactical skill, which could not be expected of every green 2nd Lt.
Within the rifle divisions, each level of the org chart has its own organic fire support, so that it does not need to rely on the highest muckety-muck and his determination that your sector is the critical one today. When he does decide that, he is going to intervene in your little corner of the world with a weight of fire like a falling house; when he doesn't, you are going to make do with your assigned peashooters.
The divisional commander is assigning his much smaller divisional fires on the same principles, with the understanding that those smaller fires become not so small if the army commander lends him an extra 36 120mm mortars for this one. The regimental commander may get his share of the divisional fires or he may get nothing outside what his own organic firepower arms can supply - but he gets a few 76mm infantry guns and some 120mm mortars and a few 45mm ATGs so that he can make such assignments even if he gets no help. Frankly though the regiment adds little - it mostly assigns its battalions missions, and the regimental commander's main way of influencing the fight is the formation he assigns to those component battalions. Formation in the very simplest sense - he has 3 on line to cover a wide front, or he has 3 in column on the same frontage to provide weight behind an attack, or the 2-1 or 1-2 versions of either of those. It is not the case that he always uses 2-1 on all roles. The most common defense is 2-1 and the most common offensive formation is column, all 3 one behind the other on the same frontage. Notice, this isn't about packing the riflemen in - those will go off in waves at proper intervals front to back. But it puts all 27 of the regiment's 82mm mortars (9 per battalion) in support behind 1 or 2 kilometers of front line.
The fire support principle at the battalion level is not implemented by having one of the component battalions support the others by fire from a stationary spot, with all arms. Instead it is a combined arms thing inside each battalion. They each have their 9 82mm mortars and their 9 Maxim heavy machineguns organized into platoons, and the "fire support plan" is based on those infantry heavy weapons. Battalion AT ability is minimal - 2 45mm ATGs and a flock of ATRs, barely enough to hold off enemy halftracks and hopeless against whole battalions of tanks. But that is because the higher muckety-mucks are expected to know where the enemy tanks are going to come and to have put all the army level ATG formations and their own supporting armor formations and the pioneers with their minefields and obstacles, in those spots.
Down inside the battalion, the same formation choices arise for the component rifle companies as appeared at battalion, and the usual formations are again 2-1 on defense and all in column on the attack. And yes that means you sometimes get really deep columns of attack, with a division first stepping off with just a few lead companies with others behind them, and so on. This doesn't mean packed shoulder to shoulder formations, it means normal open intervals 9 times in a row, one behind another, only one at a time stepping off into enemy fire zones. These "depth tactics" were meant to *outlast* the enemy on the same frontage, in an attrition battle, *not* to "run him off his feet in one go", nor to outmaneuver him. The later parts could be sidestepped to a sector that was doing better and push through from there. The last to "pancake" to the front if the other had all failed, would not attack, but instead go over to the defensive on the original frontage and hold. One gets reports of huge loss totals and those "justifying" the attack attempt when this happens - the commander can show that he sent 8/9ths of his formation forward but they could not break through. It is then the fault of the muckety muck who didn't gauge the level of support he needed correctly or given him enough supporting fires etc. If on the other hand the local commander came back with losses of only his first company or two and a remark that "it doesn't look good, we should try something else", he will be invited to try being a private as that something else, etc.
What is expected of the lower level commander in these tactics is that he "lay his ship alongside of the enemy", as Nelson put it before Trafalgar. In other words, close with the enemy and fight like hell, hurt him as much as your organic forces can manage to hurt him. Bravery, drive, ruthlessness - these are the watchwords, not cleverness or finesse or artistry.
What is happening in the combined arms tactics within that rifle column attack? The leading infantry companies are presenting the enemy a fire discipline dilemma - how close to let the advancing Russian infantry get before revealing their own positions by cutting loose. The longer they take to do so, the close the Russian infantry gets before being driven to the ground. Enemy fire is fully expected to drive the leading infantry waves to the ground, or even to break them or destroy them outright - at first. But every revealed firing point in that cutting loose is then subjected to another round of prep fire by all of the organic and added fire support elements supporting the attack. The battalion 82mm mortars, any attached tanks, and the muckety-mucks special falling skies firepower, smashes up whatever showed itself crucifying the leading wave.
Then the next wave goes in, just like the first, on the same frontage. No great finesse about it, but some of the defenders already dead in the meantime. Same dilemma for his survivors. When they decide to hold their fire to avoid giving the mortars and Russian artillery and such, juicy new things to shoot at, the advancing infantry wave gets in among them instead. And goes to work with grenade and tommy gun, flushing out every hole. The grenadier is the beater and the tommy gun is the shotgun, and Germans are the quail. Notice, the firepower of the infantry that matters in this is the short range stuff, because at longer range the killing is done by supporting artillery arms. The rifles of the most of the infantry supplement of course, but really the LMGs and rifles are primarily there as the defensive firepower of the rifle formation, at range.
It is slow and it is bloody and it is inefficient - but it is relentless. The thing being maximized is fight and predictability - that the higher muckety mucks can count on an outcome on this part of the frontage proportional to what they put into it. Where they need to win, they put in enough and they do win - hang the cost. It isn't pure suicide up front - the infantry go to ground when fired at and they fire back,and their supporting fires try to save them, and the next wave storms forward to help and pick up the survivors and carry them forward (and carry the wounded back). In the meantime the men that went to ground are defending themselves as best they can and sniping what they can see; they are not expected to stand up again and go get killed. That is the next wave's job. The first did its part when it presented its breast to the enemy's bullets for that first advance. The whole rolls forward like a ratchet, the waves driven to ground holding tenaciously whatever they reached.
That is the rifle, combined arms army, way of fighting.
The mech way of fighting is quite different. There are some common elements but again it is better to think of it like a whole different army with its own techniques. Where the rifle arm emphasizes depth and relentlessly, the mech way emphasizes rapid decision and decisive maneuver, which is kept dead simple and formulaic, but just adaptive enough to be dangerous.
First understand that the standard formation carrying out the mech way of fighting is the tank corps, which consists of 3 tank and 1 rifle brigade, plus minimal attachments of motorized guns, recon, and pioneers. The rifle brigade is 3 battalions and is normally trailing the tank brigades and holds what they take. Sometimes it doubles their infantry weight and sometimes it has to lead for a specific mission (force a river crossing, say, or a night infiltration attack that needs stealth - things only infantry can do), but in the normal offensive case it is just driving up behind something a tank brigade took, dismounting, and manning the position to let the tank brigade go on to its next mission. It has trucks to keep up, and the usual infantry heavy weapons of 82mm mortars and heavy MGs, but it uses them to defend ground taken. Notionally, the rifle brigade is the tank corps' "shield" and it maneuvers it separately as such.
The business end of the tank corps is thus its tank brigades, which are its weapons. Each has a rifle battalion organic that is normally physically riding on the tanks themselves, and armed mostly with tommy guns. The armor component of each brigade is equivalent in size to a western tank battalion - 50-60 tanks at full TOE - despite the formation name.
I will get to the larger scale tactics of the use of the tank brigades in just a second, but first the lowest level, tactical way the tanks with riders fight must be explained. It is a version of the fire discipline dilemma discussed earlier, but now with the critical difference that the tanks have huge firepower against enemy infantry and other dismounts, making any challenge to them by less than a full panzer battalion pretty suicidal. What the tanks can't do is force those enemy dismounts to open fire or show themselves. Nor can the tanks alone dig them out of their holes if they don't open fire. That is what the riders are there to do - kill the enemy in his holes under the overwatch of the massed tanks if and only if the enemy stays low and keeps quiet and tries to just hide from the tanks. That threat is meant to force the enemy to open fire. When they do, the riders drop off and take cover and don't need to do anything - the tanks murder the enemy. Riders pick their way forward carefully after that, and repeat as necessary if there are enemy left alive. This is all meant to be delivered very rapidly as an attack - drive right at them, take fire, stop and blast for 5 or 10 minutes tops, and move forward again, repeating only a few times before being right on or over the enemy.
So that covers the small tactics of the mech arm on the attack. Up a bit, though, they are maneuvering, looking for enemy weak spots, especially the weak spots in his anti tank defenses. And that follows a standard formula of the echelon attack.
Meaning, the standard formation is a kind of staggered column with the second element just right or left of the leading one, and the third off to the same side as far again. The individual tank brigade will use this approach with its component tank companies or pairs of companies, and the whole corps will use it again with its brigades.
The first element of such an echelon attack heads for whatever looks like the weakest part of the enemy position - in antitank terms - and hits it as hard as it can, rapidly, no pausing for field recon. The next in is reacting to whatever that first one experiences, but expects to wrap around one flank of whatever holds up the prior element and hit hard, again, from a slightly changing direction. This combined hit, in rapid succession, is expected to destroy that blockage or shove it aside. The third element following is expected to hit air, a hole made by the previous, and push straight into the interior of the enemy position and keep going. If the others are checked, it is expected to drive clear around the enemy of the harder enemy position - it does not run onto the same enemy hit by the previous elements. If the enemy line is long enough and strong enough to be neither flanked nor broken through by this process, well tough then. Some other formation higher in the chain or two grids over is expected to have had better luck in the meantime.
There are of course minor adaptations possible in this formula. If the lead element breaks clean through, the others shift slightly into its wake and just exploit - they don't hit any new portion of the enemy's line. If the first hit a position that is clearly strong as well as reasonably wide, the other two elements may pivot outward looking for an open flank instead of the second hitting right where the first did, just from a different angle. The leading element can pull up short and just screen the frontage if they encounter strong enemy armor. Then the second still tries to find an open flank, but the third might slide into reserve between and behind the first and second.
The point of the whole approach is to have some adaptability and flexibility, to be designed around reinforcing success and hitting weaker flanks not just frontal slogging - all of which exploit the speed and maneuver power of the tanks within the enemy's defensive zone. But they are also dead simple, formulas that can be learned by rote and applied mechanically. They are fast because there is no waiting for recon pull to bring back info on where to hit. The substance that needs to be grasped by the leader of a 2nd or 3rd element is very limited, and either he can see it himself or the previous element manages to convey it to him, or gets it up to the commander of all three and he issues the appropriate order downward. They are all mechanically applying the same doctrine and thinking on the same page, even if out of contact at times or having different amounts of information. The whole idea is get the power of maneuver adaptation without the delays or the confusion that can set in when you try to ask 3 or more bullheaded linemen to solve advanced calculus problems. There is just one "play" - "you hit him head on and stand him up, then I'll hit him low and shove him aside, and Joe can run through the hole".
There are some additional principles on defense, the rifle formation forces specially, where they use 2 up 1 back and all around zones and rely on stealth and field fortifications for their protection, while their heavy weapons reach out far enough to cover the ground between each "blob", and their LMGs and rifles reach out far enough to protect each blob frontally from enemy infantry. That plus deeper artillery fires provides a "soft defense" that is expected to strip enemy infantry from any tanks, or to stop infantry only attacks on its own. Or, at least, to make it expensive to trade through each blob in layer after layer, in the same "laying his ship alongside of the enemy", exchange-attrition sense. Then a heavier AT "network" has to cover the same frontage but starting a bit farther back, overlapped with the second and later infantry "blobs". The heavy AT network is based on cross fire by 45mm and 76mm ATGs, plus obstacles (watrer, ditches, mines, etc) to channel enemy tanks to the locations where those are dense. Any available armor stays off the line in reserve and slides in front of enemy penetration attempts, hitting strength not weakness in this case, just seeking to seal off penetrations and neutralize any "differential" in odds or armor concentration along the frontage. On defense, the mech arm operates on its own principles only at tank corps and higher scale, and does so by counterpunching with its offensive tactics, already described above.
All I've seen are trailers, which were more than enough to convince me this is Moby Dick set in a ludicrous GPW armored warfare context. Any doubts on this score should be resolved by the presence of a gleaming white Tiger 1 under seasonal conditions clearly not winter or even early spring. One review I saw called it, and rightly so, "Moby Dick on tracks." The movie looks cool, and it's always good to see actual period AFVs, uniforms and weapons (have PTSD from the visual disaster of a film called "Battle of the Bulge). Have fun with the movie you asked about! I really want to see "1944," which also has real GPW Russian AFVs, plus other goodies, and what appears to be an amazing plot.
Americans have their cowboy movies which have only a nodding acquaintance with historical reality. Russians have their WWII films. 'White Tiger' is a popcorn movie, not a historical document by any stretch of the imagination. One word of warning, you might want to shut off the film before the final scene - An interview with Hitler that is nothing but tacked-on propaganda. 100% Putin totalitarian state anti-western raging paranoia. It was stomach-turning to watch, ruined what was otherwise a light weight shoot-em-up.
Watching 'Fury' last year I got the impression that film was the American version of 'White Tiger'. Not the same fantasy story line of course, but the same colorful tank crewmembers, the drab wartime surroundings, the same somber tone, very nearly the same cinematography. And with is own somewhat stomach-turning world view that ruined the film for me.
Interestingly, the Fury Sherman wasn't an M4A3 but a diesel engined late war M4A2 Lend Lease Sherman.
1940 was preparation time, but not war. 1939 was the winter war and 1941 started continuation war what lasted to 1944. After that we fought against the germans in lapland. I think you meant the 1941.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162625/
btw, if someone want to see serious kick-ass movie about russo-finnish winterwar, check this clip:
Taranis reacted to kohlenklau in Hungarian Mod
Taranis got a reaction from kohlenklau in Hungarian Mod
